Miss Pringle, Bill and Bob’ teacher at the Rocky Bay Primary School, set the children in her class a project this week. They had to choose a wild animal and write about it.

Bill and Bob decided to write about badgers and squirrels because they had seen both of these animals in their back garden.

Bill is very proud of his project so he would like you to read it…

Badgers are very shy creatures and are mostly nocturnal; that means active at night.

They have black and white markings; their eyes are positioned in the black stripes that run up the sides of their faces. Badgers and are quite difficult to see in the dark.

Badgers live in underground burrows that they dig out; these are called setts. They have very strong, short legs that are good for digging. ln fact, the word badger might come from the French work bêcheur which means digger or it might come from the English word badge because of the white mark on its face.

The old English word for badger was brock.

Badgers pull a bedding of dried leaves down into their chambers to make them more comfortable to sleep in and there are probably a few badgers living in most dens.

The male is called a boar and the female is called a sow. (These are the same names as we give to pigs.) The babies are called cubs and there are usually one, two or three in a family although there can be up to five.

The cubs are born between December and February but you won’t see them come up above ground to play for another two months.

You are not allowed to play with little badgers, you can only watch them. But you are allowed to leave your football in the garden in case they want to play with it.

Their main food is earthworms (about 45%-50% of their diet) and they can eat up to 200 a night but they also eat insect grubs, roots, cereals, nuts, berries and fruits.

When you plant bulbs, it is a good idea to put chicken wire over the top of them if you have a badger living in your garden, otherwise the badgers are likely to eat your bulbs.

Badgers can even climb trees to get fruit.

Badgers are to be found just about everywhere in the world except Australia.

People like badgers and they are often characters in stories about animals and the most famous one was in Wind in the Willows.

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